Are you going to replace your “Inverted Umbrella” Aerial by SteppIR Aerial?
Aye, I’ve got a SteppIR UrbanBeam which I’m partway through assembling.
What model SteppIR are you putting up? Don’t know if you already posted that. I didn’t see it in a quick scan.
You were typing the answer while I was asking the question. Timing is everything. Thanks.
An UrbanBeam, the one that looks like a bowtie. I don’t expect a huge performance increase over the hex but the front to back and side rejection is better, being full sized elements instead of folded.
It also includes 40m and 30m as folded dipoles - So I’m gaining 30m over the hex because I had the 40m option on top.
Also replacing the twelve year old unknown quality RG213 with Hyperflex 10.
Yes the M&P Hyperflex 10 is some nice coax. I have some of it in play. The connectors are a piece of work. Nice.
Oh, they’re so easy to put on - I detest PL259s with a passion but even those are easy with the decent compression connectors.
I bought a 100m role of Hyperflex 10, it’s just a handy cable to have for whenever it’s needed. I will need some to make a new tail from the ADSB-B receiver at the top of the mast to the new aerial because of the extra height I’m going to get.
I’ve got GM3SEK chokes at the feed point to the HF aerial and also in the loft, just before the coax comes into the shack and I wound those using Ultraflex 7, the bottom one has N females on each end of the cable so the stub from the shack also has an N type and then the run from the loft to the top of the mast also has an N type at the top end. The choke at the top has an N female on one side and then a PL259 on the other so it goes straight into the aerial itself.
Even on HF, I like to minimise losses. I put the new coax run on the analyser and the measured loss is exactly to spec. The book says 1.5dB for 100m on 14 MHz, I measured a fraction over 0.5dB for my 30m run on 20m.
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Sounds like you have all parameters of your system peaked and tuned. Good work!
I mistakenly assumed the aerial came with a mount that’ll go up to 2” but it appears to be 50mm and won’t go around my stub mast.
Fortunately I have a bracket that’ll do to fix it in place.
The SteppIR still isn’t built but I hope to get the new ADS-B aerial up at full height tomorrow evening.
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We shall be waiting on the initial ADS-B receive perceptions.
Bit more prep done this morning, all that’s left for today is to fit another plug to the coax (once I’ve measured it to the correct length), disconnect the old coax from the pigtail, connect the new coax, route it all in place and nail the aerial to the top. Then wind it up.
For (my own) reference.
Mast is 33ft
Hexbeam base was at 35 ft
SteppIR will be at 36 ft
Old ADS-B aerial was at 41 ft
New ADS-B aerial will be at 48 ft
The last time I raised my aerial by 7 ft it made a huge difference, I don’t expect anything like that again this time so it’ll be really interesting to see.
At the moment, my stats are already showing an improvement because my aerial is hanging upside down over the washing line, almost touching the floor but it’s now vertically polarised. For the last fortnight, it’s been horizontally polarised, about 5 ft off the floor. Polarisation makes a huge difference (but we knew that anyway).
Just a few more hours…
Steady as she goes! Vertical is a good thing.
And I’m back.
Excuse the SteppIR boom with the plastic bags wrapped around the end.
After all the build up, I hope this works well 
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Already a big difference, range up to 280NM, 2200 msg/sec, looking up again 
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Is the Vinnant 8P that you have at the top or did you end up with something else?
Yes, it’s the 8P.
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It needs running for a while to tell really, I have a feeling the decent weather may have improved conditions today so it’s not really clear at the moment.
@caius, are you seeing any enhancement today?
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I saw a bit of a lift for range overnight, but through the day has been fairly typical. I don’t seem to get quite as much of a boost as you do when there’s good tropo though, so perhaps you are still getting some benefit. Messages are about average but it’s been a busy day in terms of numbers of aircraft. You can see my stats here.
It looks like your signal strength has improved though as the decoder is using a lower gain now than before - that should help with receiver noise so perhaps you are getting some weaker signals you weren’t previously.
Yeah. it’s really difficult to tell at the moment. A good test will be comparing to @MartinOrpen’s local receiver tomorrow and see how it looks.
I did some back of the envelops sums earlier, bearing in mind I don’t like dBi
Old coax tail - 0.737 dB loss
New coax tail - 1.072 dB loss
Old aerial gain - 5.5 dBi
New aerial gain - 10.0 dBi
So I have a theoretical increase in gain from the aerial of 4.5 dBi. That’s not even half an s-point on a properly calibrated meter.
However, I have a slightly increased coax tail loss so effectively I have 4.165 dBi more gain from the aerial than I had before. Plus a bit extra height.
I also noticed the gain has dropped to 13 from the more typical 15 it’s been for the last year or so, which does suggest an increase in signal.
At these points, everything pretty much evens out and the numbers don’t actually mean much. Real world performance is what counts and realistically, it’ll be another month before I can see the final result because that’s how long it’ll take for the two week period of a lowered mast to vanish off the stats.
Of course, a direct comparison against Martin and Gerry over the next few days will be fun to watch
You are right, longterm will tell you more, figures I saw are just an indication, usually I compare week over week. 
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